Two weeks today and yesterday
8/9/2009

Hello from Stupid HQ, New York,

There's way too many Global Premiere happenings happening - can't believe it's in only two weeks yesterday (USA) and today (rest of the world) - so I'm gonna resort to a list. Normal prose will resume next time, probably.

exciting stuff - Round of applause for the first Global Premiere cinemas to sell out: Paris, Rotterdam & Amsterdam- And another for what must be the most ambitious screening: the pacific island of Kiribati is hoping to screen in a 5,000 seater stadium (!!)

- Our friends in the Maldives also going strong with a 585 seat cinema booked for the night - with the President as special guest (surely these two will set the record for ratio of available seats: population) - Thailand is broadcasting the film + live event on TV to 4.5 million people...

- ... as are Papua New Guinea (not sure of the viewing figures, but it's on the main channel at primetime, so should be good). These two are bizarrely the first ever TV broadcasts of the film. Trailer in Thai here if you don't believe us.

- Attached a pic of the "edible decor" growing in Brooklyn for the guests at the New York premiere to graze on. Ever seen anything cooler?

Eco premiere nibbles

>> To find the latest details for your country - and to book tickets - either follow the links on the map on the homepage, http:///www.ageofstupid.net, or go to eg http://www.ageofstupid.net/france <<

- The stars of the film will be heading to their local screenings - and we're going to do our very best to get pictures of them all emailed to send out on the satellite link for you all to "ooooh" at. Alvin the New Orleans Shell guy is joining us at the solar cinema in New York. Layefa the Nigerian fishing medical student is going to Lagos. Fernand the mountain guide will be in his local cinema in Chamonix. Jamila & Adnan the Iraqi kids are going to a rooftop screening in Amman and Piers the windfarm guy, oops we haven't spoken to him yet (Piers - wanna go to London? Or an Indie Screening near you?)

- The USA cinemas - all 444 of them - have started shifting a few tickets now that our (hilarious) trailer has kicked off its (wait for it) 1.2 million screenings in mainstream US cinemas. A friend saw it play before Inglorious Bastards the other day and said it was suitably incongruous suddenly launching into "Will people in the future call our time The Age of Stupid?" (the voiceover has to be heard to be believed). It's also been watched 45,000 times online.

- Attached is a pic of the outdoor cinema specially made in Vanuatu (pacific island already losing fertile land to rising seas). The screen was made by a sailmaker. There's seats for 160 people + more lying on the grass

- 13 cinemas in Brazil just confirmed. As have a few cinemas in Argentina, Chile and Hong Kong. (Mega kudos to the tireless team at Arts Alliance for calling round and round till each country eventually agrees just to make them go away.)

- Mauritius has had to pull out because swine flu regulations mean that the authorities have banned all large public events. No really.

- Germany literally confirmed 5 seconds ago that it is joining the event with at least four screens. Details in next couple of days.

- Anyone in Australia or NZ will be able to arrange an Indie Screening in their home, school, church, business, scout hut or anywhere else they like. Buy a license from the website, then invite all your friends, make them some popcorn, charge for tickets and keep the profits for your climate campaign or pocket. Booking opens this Thursday from the Indie Screenings website and the earliest date you can hold your screening is Global Premiere day, 22nd September: http://www.indiescreenings.net

- In the UK, there are two options. There will be one cinema in London screening the film + New York live event (Kofi Annan, Thom Yorke singing etc etc) on Sep 22nd. Tickets go on sale from our Facebook group on Thursday - 15 quid each. Alternatively, you can arrange your own Indie Screening for Sep 22nd (or later) and get the webcast of the New York live event - ie as long as you have an internet connection, you and your pals will be able to watch the film (off DVD) and then the live event (off the internet, with a password). Any questions, ask ben@ageofstupid.net

- If anyone was at the 10:10 launch last week, how funny was the "let's call Ed Miliband" live phone call on stage? No prizes for guessing who we now have our hearts set on for a similar thing at the New York premiere.... in fact I'm looking at a pic of him on the office wall this very second....

- Lizzie's managed to find a sailing boat for celebs in New York to arrive in. Our new location (Central Park was way too expensive) is on the river, so people are sailing, rowing and swimming (maybe not) up to the green carpet- Moby just confirmed that he will definitely make it to the premiere (interesting fact: Moby provided free music for the first video I ever made, Truth or Dairy, way back in 1994). He has a gig in New York that night, but we're hoping he'll have time to sing a quick song on the green carpet - we've got the pedal-powered PA standing by in case. (I'm actually thinking of nipping off to the Moby gig rather than watching that goddamn film for the ten squillionth time)

- Lizzie is very excited because totally brilliant actor Gael Garcia Bernal watched Stupid and said it was '"Fascinating and terrifying".

- The satellite team went to Thom Yorke's studio to check that all's well for his live song and have given the thumbs up- Ditto the Greenpeace ship near the Indonesian rainforest. Apparently they film the scientists speaking in the rainforest, a mini satellite transmitter bounces it to the ship which is moored nearby, ship bounces it to a great big satellite somewhere up in the sky, great big satellite bounces it down to our giant truck in Manhattan, then scientist guy speaks to me in the tent and the whole lot bounces back up again into the sky to bounce down again to cinemas all over the world. Boggles the mind.

scary stuff - and win tickets

So that's all the good news.... And the other news is that we are seriously in need of cash. It's not that the budget has gone up or that we're spending faster than we should be - it's that all these amazing offers keep coming in which we desperately don't want to say no to - eg 4.5 million people watching in Thailand - but which drive the costs up.

So if anybody out there was considering buying a share - or if any of you who have already bought shares fancy another - please speak now. There are seven shares left from the last round, which are 10,000 pounds for one of 5,000 for half. All the info is here, but the gist is that you invest 10,000 pounds (or 5,000 for half a share) and you get a slice of the profits paid once a year for ten years (first payment: October 2009). We've already raised more than £600,000 from this "crowd-funding" scheme, so you'd be in very good company. Contact Andrew Douglas on andrew@ageofstupid.net or +447912 150154 if you'd like more info or to have a chat.

If you don't have 5,000 quid lying around, could you maybe make a donation? You can either sponsor a particular item for the premiere (though the yak is long gone) here or give a straight donation here. Everyone who donates 50 pounds or more to the kitty will be added to a prize draw to win two tickets to their choice of any screening in any cinema taking part in the Global Premiere anywhere in the world (including the New York solar cinema tent - but only if they can get there without flying).

Hope you can help out on the cash-front. Would be such a shame if some of the screenings had to be cancelled for a lack of readies.

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What's this then?

Call us old-fashioned, but here at Spanner HQ our email updates are still our favourite
means of communication with one's people. Frankly, we're just too long-winded to embrace
our Twitter and Facebook accounts any more than tokenistically.

What sort of messages? Chatty. Very chatty. And highly detailed and painfully honest and,
so we're told, often very funny.

How many people are on the list? After studying our How To Be A Proper Grown-Up Business
manual, we now understand that this kind of top secret corporate information should never
be revealed. But it's more than 25,000 and less than 250,000.

We'd love to encourage you to sign up by telling you how often you'll receive messages,
but it's a bit more haphazard than that. Basically, Franny writes one whenever she has
something interesting to say or the mood to impart strikes her. The highest ever frequency
was in the last week before the Global Premiere, when the poor subscribers' inboxes were being
visited nearly every day - and the lowest was in summer 2010, when it was down to less than
once a month.